Eighteenth-century recipeshttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com
Remedies, recipes and domestic life
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngEighteenth-century recipeshttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com
A bowl of cherrieshttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/a-bowl-of-cherries/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/a-bowl-of-cherries/#respondFri, 26 May 2017 16:36:05 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1488To continue the theme of the last post, I thought I’d share some culinary recipes using cherries (and get some inspiration, since we’ve still got a lot on the trees!). These are from the early seventeenth-century recipe book of Diana Astry.[1]

The first is for dried cherries, which sounds rather time consuming:

Take 6 lb. cherrys; take 1 lb. sugar; stone the cherrys & strew the sugar among them on the fire & let them boyle apace, then take them of[f] & scum them clean & put them into an earthen pott & let them stand 10 dayes. Then take them out & lay them on dishes & set them in a oven after bread, turn them into dry dishes every day.

This recipe for cherry ‘bear’ or beer is alongside other recipes for wines and meads, and shows a certain familiarity with brewing:

Brue [brew] 16 gns. alle [ale] pretty strong, about 6 bushalls to the barell, & hop it well fitt to keep; & take 1 peck ripe cherrys & put them in a earthen pan in a kettle of water over the fire & lett them boyle very well till thay have lost thayre coler [colour] & the juice all out of them. Then strain them from thayr licker [liquor] & put 2 lb. sugar into it, & when your alle have down working put the cherry liquor in it & lett it work a little while; & then put a good handful of wheat in & stop it up close 2 mths.

In this recipe for ‘jam of cherrys’, currant juice is added to boost the pectin content, which in cherries is quite low:

Take 12 lb. cherrys, stone them into a bason, & let them stew in thayr owne liquor till dry, & till thay are so tender that you may mash them. Then put to them 3 lb. loafe sugar & 1 pt. curan juice & let it boyle tell it do jelly, stur it ofthen. Then put it in potts.

Finally, this is how to preserve your very best cherries (although it’s quite tricky to stone them while leaving on the stalks):

Take & pick out your fairest morellea [morello] cherryes to preserve with the stemps [stems] & stone them. Take your smallest & redest cherryes & straine as much of the juice through a cloath, out of them. Then take 1 lb. beaten or sceared [scarced = sifted] sugar & put into the preservein pan, & put as much of the liquor of the cherryes as will melt & desolve the sugar, & set it to boyle; & when the sugar is in a parfect syrup put 1 lb. cherryes into it & let them boyle very fast; & the juice of your cherryes will turn the syrup very thinn, let them boyle very fast till the syrop is boyled, then set them to cole [cool]. Boyle your syrop after the cherryes are taken out.

Presumably you put the syrup back into the jar where you’re keeping the cherries, but, as so often in early modern recipes, that knowledge is tacit.

[1] Bedfordshire and Luton Archives, X178/1. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen the series of menus from her companion notebook, with the hashtag #dianaastry.

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/a-bowl-of-cherries/feed/0sallyosborncherries 2Cherry ripehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/cherry-ripe/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/cherry-ripe/#respondMon, 22 May 2017 10:54:29 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1438We have five cherry trees in the garden here, and at the moment we’re positively deluged with plump, sweet fruit. Cherries are touted today as something of a wonder food, full of antioxidants, Vitamins A and C and melatonin. Nowadays it’s the tart version that seems to be preferred for its medicinal properties, but in the eighteenth century it was black cherries that were used, often as black cherry water.

Hester Combe’s fairly straightforward recipe for cherry water runs:

Take 2 quarts of whit[e] wine or sack, steep in 4 ounces of sinemon [cinnamon], and 6 pound of black cherries stoned, for 3 or 4 days then [di]still them in a cold still: you may sweten it with a little fine sugar, this water may be drunk in burning fevers when other cordials ar[e] to[o] hot.[1]

Another, anonymous recipe for black cherry wine to be used for convulsions is less simple:

Take what quantity of black cherrys you please[,] put them into a bason stalked[,] break them with your hand, & put them into a cotton bag and hang them up over a bason … squeezing them often untill all the juce be drained: then let it stand a while and settle. but scum of[f] the froth, then let it stand 12 hours at the least then strain it of[f] gently from the bottom and to every part of juice put in 3 quarters of a pound of fine lofe sugher be[a]ten fine[,] keepeing it stiring till it tis all dissolved so that it may not settle then let it stand uncovered an hour and then bottle it up for your use. Leave some roome for it will worke[,] when it hath done working [fermenting] tye it doune close[,] set it in a coole seller [cellar] in glase bottles. When you take of this cherey wine for fitts put to it a little whit[e] wine or ordinary cherry water.[2]

Black cherry water was also said to be good for melancholy and ‘for the passion or tremblinge of the heart’,[3] for ‘a surfeit or any stopping in the stomach’[4] and for the gout (consumption of cherries is recommended for gout sufferers today, to reduce the level of uric acid in the blood and lessen inflammation).

Or if you have a cold, you might want to try this rather pleasant sounding remedy:

Half an oun[ce] of Spanish liquorish, half an oun[ce] of black sugar candy, half a pint of pennyroyal water, half a pint of black cherry water: stir all together over the fire till it’s disolved. Take a spoonfull any time when your cough is troublesome.[5]

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/cherry-ripe/feed/0sallyosbornCherriesHorse sensehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/horse-sense/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/horse-sense/#respondFri, 19 May 2017 10:36:53 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1425Manuscript recipes are not always for food or medicine – they may be for household necessities such as ink, paint or polish, for cosmetics such as face wash, moisturiser or tooth powder, or for instructions in other areas of life, such as gardening and even knitting.

One anonymous compiler of an extensive and closely written book of recipes[1] includes a section on ‘Curiosities’. Among these are the following recommendations for managing your horses. First, if you want to make out you’re a horse whisperer, try this:

To make a horse follow his master find him out & challenge him amongst never so many people

Take a pound of oat meal to which put a quarter of a pound of honey and half a pound of liquorice, make a little cake thereof & put it in to your bosom next to your naked skin, then run & labour yourself till you sweat & so rub all your sweat upon your cake, then keep the horse fasting a day & a night & give it him to eat, which done turn him loose & he shall not only follow you, but also hunt & seek you out when he has lost you.

That may be bad enough, but the coda is even worse:

And when he comes to you spit in his mouth & anoint his tongue with your spittle & thus doing he will never forsake you.

The other two apply if you don’t like the horse’s colour (or maybe you’re trying to trick a prospective buyer?):

How to dapple a horse

Take in the spring the large buds of young oak trees,[2] mix them among the horse’s provender & give it him 3 or 4 times to eat & he will be dappled, and continue so for a whole year. The buds of young elm trees will have the same effect.

+++

To spot a white horse with black spots

Take litharge[3] 3 oz. Quick lime 6 oz. Beat them fine & mix them together. Put the mixture into a pan & pour a sharp lee[4] over it, then boil it & you will have a fat substance swim at top with which anoint the horse in such places as you design to have black & it will turn of that colour immediately.

Should you be unhappy with your own appearance, the author has some advice about this latter recipe:

It has the same effect in changing hair that is red into black colour with only this difference viz you are to take an equal quantity of lime & litharge & instead of boiling it with lee, boil it only with fresh water. What swims at top is fit for use & will answer your expectation. What hairs you anoint with it in the evening will be black next morning.

The inclusion of the caustic quicklime means you might not want to try that at home!

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/horse-sense/feed/0sallyosbornWorks like a charmhttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/works-like-a-charm/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/works-like-a-charm/#respondWed, 17 May 2017 11:14:57 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1388Enlightenment medical thinking reflected the belief that illness and death could be avoided through the development of knowledge and human ability, and a vast variety of remedies existed for ailments both large and small. Nevertheless, in diaries and other writings – as well as the occasional recipe, for instance a remedy ‘To heal an old cough’, which ‘will help you by Gods Grace’,[1] or one for gout ‘which I have taken and by Gods blessing found great good by it’[2] – a belief in divine assistance can still be ascertained. Folk practices did not entirely disappear either, with the use of charms as remedies persisting into the nineteenth century; Alun Withey notes that ‘healing charms… dovetailed easily with humoural notions of illness as a foreign matter which needed to be driven out’.[3]

The commonplace book of William Grasing, a yeoman from Minsterworth,[4] includes a theologically mixed charm ‘For the ague’:

Abracadabra

Abracadabr

Abracadab

Abracada

Abracad

Abraca

Abrac

Abra

Abr

Ab

A

Gloria Excelsis Deo

If you suffered a burn or scald, you could repeat this one (although I’m not quite sure where that episode is in the Bible):

Mary mild as burned her child and on a spark of fire out fier in frost in the name of the father son and holy gost, amen amen amen

To stop bleeding, repeat this charm five times:

I believe Jesus Christ to be the son of god, he was born of the virgin Mary and was baptised of John the Baptist in the River Jordon the water was wide and red he commanded and it stod so stand the blod in the name of the Father Son and Holy Gost three persons in Trinity & one God Good Lord do this in Charity for thy servant Amen.

For ‘the prick of a thorn’, he recommends this analogous entreaty:

In Bethlehem our Christ was born thay crowned his head with Nails and Thorns Let no flesh corropt in here I tuch and the Lord heal, pray God prosper my handy works Amen Amen Amen

And finally, a rather strange couplet, ‘a night spel to catch theeves’, which ‘will drive away aney eevil sperit that hants aney house or any other pleas to prevent aney garden or orcherd fram being robed or a house hee canot go[,] before sunrising having in every fower corners of the hous garden or orcherd this sentiments having of thee’:

[4] P218/MI/1, accounts of William Grasing of Minsterworth (d. 1798), yeoman, 1770–96, Gloucester Archives. This charm is claimed to be Hebrew in origin and, without the final line, is included in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) as one way ‘the deceived’ attempted to ward off plague.

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/works-like-a-charm/feed/0sallyosbornGoing for the burn – or the bouncehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/going-for-the-burn-or-the-bounce/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/going-for-the-burn-or-the-bounce/#respondFri, 17 Jul 2015 12:12:13 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1360We’re used to doctors extolling the benefits of exercise today, but that recognition is not a modern phenomenon. Among the six ‘non-naturals’ of humoural thinking – diet, air, exercise, sleep, evacuations and the passions – exercise was often viewed as the most important form of health preservation. In the eighteenth century, William Buchan, author of the popular handbook Domestic Medicine, claimed that ‘of all the causes which conspire to render the life of man short and miserable, none have greater influence than the want of proper exercise’ [1]. George Cheyne, physician to the fashionable, promoted walking as the most natural kind of exercise, and it seems to have been a female favourite, particularly in the countryside. Writer Elizabeth Montagu waxed positively lyrical on the subject, saying in a letter to Hester Pitt:

The summer season is the festival of a saunterer, there is something sublime in the reverie of a rural walk that one is apt to fancy oneself more nobly occupied than those engaged in the actual business and useful employments of human life [2].

Country house gardens were designed with circuits such as those at Stourhead and Stowe, the circular route with its temples and follies being seen as something of a ‘paradisal pilgrimage’, which provided multiple views of the gardens with no need to double back on oneself [3]. The poem ‘Stowe’ by Gilbert West, whose uncle Lord Cobham owned that house, described the tour in detail and lauds its obelisk, ‘chrystal lake’ and ‘sylvan Theatre’. West also talked about the other opportunities for exercise there:

The swing was adventurous not only because you were pushed up in the air, but for the potential for revealing more than you intended: an article in the Spectator advised gentlemen that ‘The lover who swings his lady is to tie her clothes very close together with his hat-band before she admits him to throw up her heels’ [5]. I think this is the danger West was referring to when he wrote in his poem about ‘those mysterious Charms expos’d to view’, followed by what appears to be a game of kiss chase leading to the ‘Private Grotto’.

The Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea by Thomas Bowles, 1754. commons.wikimedia.org

Similar opportunities for amorous encounters were presented by urban pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall and the more exclusive Ranelagh in Chelsea. There one could see and be seen while promenading, as well as drinking tea, attending concerts and watching fireworks – 12,000 people watched Handel rehearse his Music for the Royal Fireworks at Vauxhall in 1769, and novelist Tobias Smollett said that the magic lanterns at Ranelagh ‘made me almost think I was in some enchanted castle or fairy palace’ [6]. I suppose a stroll round the growing number of shops for some conspicuous consumption might also have counted as exercise. Dancing at balls during the season in London or in the spa towns certainly would have; as anyone who watched the recent re-creation of the Netherfield Ball will know, it was a strenuous pursuit. Together with fencing and tennis, it was an activity that ‘exercises every part’ and so is ‘generally most advantageous’, according to a treatise from ‘A Medical Gentleman’ called An Easy Way to Prolong Life, by a Little Attention to our Manner of Living.

Another generally advantageous pursuit was riding. From the spa at Cheltenham, Judith Milbanke wrote to her sister Mary: ‘I rise a little after seven, drink a Glass or two of the Waters & walk two hours before breakfast’, followed by ‘famous riding parties’ [7]. A letter from Lady Anne Hastings to her mother, the Countess of Huntingdon, begs her not to ‘omit the exercise’ and says that ‘you may have a pair [of horses] to go on an airing as often as you please’ [8]. This would have been in a carriage, but women did also ride on horseback, and a letter to a Mrs Gore in the Somerset Archives recommended doing so every day, ‘but not to continue it so long at a time as being fatigued would destroy its good effects’ [9]. Women had to ride sidesaddle, though, their left foot in the stirrup, their right leg supported by an extended saddle and their body facing forwards, which can’t have been too comfortable. Men, of course, faced no such limitations, and as well as riding across their land were able to participate in hunting and even horse racing.

Cheyne’s list of healthful exercises also includes ‘Digging, Working at a Pump, Ringing a dumb Bell, &c’ [10]. Not the activities of your average Georgian gentlemen, one would have thought, although they were particularly recommended for those with bad backs. In fact, essayist Joseph Addison was a devotee, writing in the Spectator:

I exercise myself an hour every morning upon a dumb-bell that is placed in the corner of my room, and pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the most profound silence [11].

Another indoor exercise was the ‘chamber horse’ that Cheyne recommended in a letter to novelist Samuel Richardson, which ‘has all the good beneficial effects of a hard trotting horse except the fresh air’. The description makes it sound like an instrument of torture – ‘the chair you sit on with a cushion on the board as a bottom to it with a two armed hoop and with a foot stool that with a sliding board may be raised higher or lower’ [12]. The seat, made out of stacked horsehair cushions, functioned as a kind of concertina when you sat down, then you pulled yourself up by the handles. The air went in and out of the cushions through slits in the side. The chamber horse could also be used in a parallel way to today’s standing desk, with Cheyne telling Richardson: ‘You may dictate, direct, or read in it’.

However, Jane Austen records in her unfinished novel Sanditon that ‘poor Mr. Hollis’s chamber-horse’ was available for sale ‘as good as new’, and they made frequent appearances in auction catalogues, so it appears that many of these devices met the same fate as modern exercise machines. As so often, plus ça change.

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/going-for-the-burn-or-the-bounce/feed/0sallyosbornRanelagh GardensChamber HorseRiddle-me-reehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/riddle-me-ree-2/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/riddle-me-ree-2/#respondTue, 14 Jul 2015 15:39:18 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1352In the letters of Sir William Robinson (1655–1736), 1st Baronet of Newby [1], is the following set of riddles. I found it difficult to work out which person’s names they’re referring to, but all becomes (a bit) clearer when you look at the answers he provides – I’ve given these in the footnotes, if you want to try and solve them first.

The letter which sometimes for no letter gos

And what’s a great deal in any man’s nose

With the name of York Medows and what quenches our thirst

Is the name of a Lady deny it who durst

That in virtue & goodness may be reckonnd the first [2]

*************************

What the gardiner doth when he planteth his trees

And what we must do to be cloathed in frize

Is the name of a man who is chearfull & free

And whose age I account to be fivety & three [3]

*************************

The first letter we learn, and the least bird that flys

With a part of the wood that in Beaconsfield lies

Is the name of a man who with indolent air

Makes love without meaning and sight for the fair [4]

*************************

The letter next G and the Welsh-man’s distemper

Is the name of a lady who’s ne’re out of temper

And who dances with such an air, motion & grace

That you don’t see a bit of her name in her pace [5]

*************************

What’s found in a bush & what hunters pursue

With the place where at present you’ve nothing to do

Is the name of a man who is both blind & old

Yet wishes for waters to keep him from cold [6]

I’m fascinated by the ‘Welsh-man’s distemper’ in the fourth one. The association between the itch (scabies or other skin infestations) and the people of Wales was apparently widespread – according to Steven Connor’s The Book of Skin, Wales was even known as ‘Itchland’!

4. A-wren-dell – Arundel, probably Thomas Howard (1683–1732), 8th Duke of Norfolk and 7th Earl of Arundel. In 1709 he married Maria Shireburn, from a well-known Catholic family in Lancashire, who brought him a fortune of £30,000. I’m not sure why the insult, but it may have been because of his supposed involvement in a Jacobite plot.

5. Miss H-itch.

6. Hare-court – probably Simon Harcourt (1661–1727), Lord Chancellor to Queen Anne. He left court on the accession of George I in 1714, so he had ‘nothing to do’ there. Also alleged to be a Jacobite, which may account for the tone.

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/riddle-me-ree-2/feed/0sallyosbornAlmost therehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/almost-there/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/almost-there/#commentsMon, 13 Jul 2015 08:18:19 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1348Well, it was a long journey – five years, five months, to be exact – but I got there in the end. My thesis was submitted at the end of June: ‘The role of domestic knowledge in an era of professionalisation: Eighteenth-century manuscript medical recipe collections’.

While I wait for my viva, I thought readers of this blog might be interested in a sneak peek at the contents. I studied over 240 recipe collections from all over England, containing over 19,000 medical recipes, so of course, much of the thesis is about the recipes themselves – what form they take, what conditions they aim to treat, whether they differ regionally or over time. I offer detailed studies of recipes for coughs and colds, gout, rabies, diet drinks and Daffy’s Elixir, examining the variety of recipes, their ingredients and how they differ or are duplicated in different collections. I also consider differences by gender and by age.

But there is more to recipes than their content alone, so I take a look at the recipe books as material objects, the paraphernalia needed to create them, how they were structured, ways of finding the information easily and what else they contained. I consider the women and men who compiled the collections and contributed the recipes, and describe how recipe exchange functioned as social currency in different kinds of network. Finally, I identify reasons why the practice of collecting recipes continued through the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, despite the presence of growing numbers of professional practitioners, off-the-shelf alternatives and printed sources of information.

Want to know more than that? You’ll just have to keep your fingers crossed that I acquit myself well in my viva…

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/almost-there/feed/2sallyosbornGout gets evenhttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/gout-gets-even/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/gout-gets-even/#respondSun, 23 Mar 2014 11:16:30 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1325In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to my article in April’s History Today on gout and its resurgence: http://www.historytoday.com/sally-osborn/gout-gets-even
]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/gout-gets-even/feed/0sallyosbornThe Vegetarian Society, Victorian stylehttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-vegetarian-society-victorian-style/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-vegetarian-society-victorian-style/#commentsSun, 23 Mar 2014 11:10:34 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1323Apologies for the lack of posts on this blog recently – I’m writing up my PhD thesis, and in the last three months have not only completed (most of) three chapters, but also two articles, one published and one forthcoming, and a one-hour public lecture. Doesn’t leave much time for anything else!

This post is a little later than my normal timeframe, but hopefully of interest nonetheless. Inside a late 18th/early 19th century recipe book in the Herefordshire Record Office (G2/1030) I found a leaflet advertising the Vegetarian Society, which was founded in 1847. It carries the following rather earnest declaration:

The objects of the Society are, to induce habits of abstinence from the Flesh of Animals as Food, by the dissemination of information upon the subject, by means of tracts, essays, and lectures, proving the many advantages of a physical, intellectual, and moral character, resulting from Vegetarian habits of Diet; and thus, to secure, through the association, example, and efforts of its members, the adoption of a principle which will tend essentially to true civilisation, to universal brotherhood, and to the increase of human happiness generally.

No ambition there, then! Unfortunately the recipes themselves are rather stodgy – no low carb here – and miles away from the varied and enticing vegetarian food we are used to today. Take a look and see if you fancy any of them:

1. Bread-crumb omelet.—One pint of bread-crumbs, a large handful of chopped parsley, with a large slice of onion minced fine, and a teaspoonful of dried marjoram. Beat up two eggs, add a teaspoonful of milk, some nutmeg, pepper, and salt, and a piece of butter the size of an egg. Mix altogether, and bake in a slow oven till of a light brown colour. Turn out of dish and send to table immediately.

3. Macaroni pudding.—Two ounces of macaroni; boil till tender, drain the water from it, and add half-a-pint of new milk, and half-an-ounce of parsley chopped fine. A teaspoonful of lemon thyme powdered, some lemon peel, pepper, salt, and dash of nutmeg. Put it in a well buttered dish, and bake twenty minutes. If wanted richer, beat up an egg in the milk.

4. Buttered onions.—Take enough (rather small) onions to make a dish; let them all be of like size; peel them and throw them into a stew-pan of boiling water with some salt. Boil for five minutes; drain them, put them into a saucepan with a good thick piece of butter, a sprinkling of nutmeg, pepper, and salt; toss them about over a clear fire until they begin to brown; add a tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup, and a dessert-spoonful of sage, and marjoram and parsley. Do them gently for a quarter of an hour, and serve upon toast moistened in lemon-juice.

5. Mushroom pudding.—One pint of mushrooms, half a pound of bread crumbs, and two ounces of butter. Put the butter in the bread crumbs, adding pepper and salt, and as much water as will moisten the bread; add the mushrooms cut in pieces; line a basin with paste, put in the mixture, cover with paste, tie a cloth over, and boil an hour and a-half. It is equally good baked.

6. Buttered eggs, or rumbled eggs.—Break three eggs into a small stew pan, put a table-spoonful of milk and an ounce of fresh butter, add a salt-spoonful of salt and a little pepper. Set the stew pan over a moderate fire, and stir the eggs with a spoon, being careful to keep every particle in motion until it is set. Have ready a crisp piece of toast, pour the eggs upon it, and serve immediately. [This mode of dressing eggs secures that the white and the yolk shall be perfectly mixed. The white, which is so very nutritious, is insipid and unpalatable when the egg is simply boiled, fried, or poached.]

7. Potted lentils or haricots.—Stew a teacupful of lentils in water with a morsel of butter, and some mushroom powder. Beat up to a smooth paste. When cold, add an equal quantity of fine brown bread crumbs, with seasoning of salt, mace and cayenne, and the size of a walnut of old cheese. Beat all together with two ounces of butter. Press firmly into pots. (Haricot beans may be used instead of lentils.} If it is to be kept long, hot butter must be poured on the top.

8. Baked potatoes with sage and onion.—Peel as many potatoes as you require; put them in a pie dish, and a good sized onion, with half a teaspoonful of dried sage, two ounces of butter, and enough water to cover the bottom of the dish. Season with salt and pepper.

9. Barley soup.—Soak four table-spoonful of Scotch barley in cold water for an hour. Put it in stewpan with about a pint of cold water. Set it on a moderate fire; let it stew gently, and add three good-sized onions, two small turnips, a carrot, and head of celery. Season to taste with salt and pepper. When quite soft, add a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup.

10. Groat pudding.—Pick and wash a half-pint of groats, and put them in a dish with a pint of water, a large onion chopped small, a little sage or marjoram, a good lump of butter, pepper and salt. The groats may be steeped thus for some hours before baking. Apples may be added, or substituted, for the onions and herbs. If substituted, use sugar instead of the seasoning. Bake in a moderate oven till the groats are tender.

11. Savoury pie.—Pare several potatoes and two or three onions. Slice them, if large. Place these in a buttered pie-dish, in layers, with a little well steeped tapioca, pepper, salt, and powdered sage upon each, also mushroom powder, or fresh mushrooms if liked. Slices of cold bread omelet, or a few Brussells sprouts, may be inserted. Cover with a plain crust; one made of ordinary bread dough, with a very little butter, is preferable to anything heavy. Keep the bottom of the pie supplied with hot water while baking, or it will be without gravy.

12. Vegetarian gravy.—This may be flavoured either with mushroom powder or browned onion, and coloured with a little chicory, the basis being made as plain melted butter, with less flour or thickening, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and mace, if approved.

There are some interesting seasonings there – the herby Yorkshire pudding looks worth trying, and trendy chefs have rediscovered mushroom powder – but the potato pie with tapioca, bread pudding and a bread dough crust? You’d put on half a stone just looking at it.

]]>https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-vegetarian-society-victorian-style/feed/1sallyosbornNothing new under the sunhttps://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/nothing-new-under-the-sun/
https://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/nothing-new-under-the-sun/#respondThu, 05 Dec 2013 13:20:15 +0000http://18thcenturyrecipes.wordpress.com/?p=1298We all know it’s fashionable for chefs to take inspiration from old recipes, but I’m sure we don’t always appreciate quite how much of what is currently in vogue has been done before. Here’s a selection of recipes from one late 18th-century manuscript collection (MS 4992, Wellcome Collection) to illustrate the point.

First, those fancy powders that get scattered around the plate? Put to a different use here, but the product is the same:

Mushroom powder which you may use ½ a spoonful at a time to fish or any other sauce

Take the mushrooms & wash them well with salt & water rubbing them with a piece of flannel put them into a sauce pan & drain them out of their liquor season them with pepper & salt add 2 or 3 spoonsfull of vinegar a nutmeg sliced, some mace & cloves 2 or 3 bay leaves a top of rosemary a slice of onion a piece of butter as big as a walnut let them stew till the liquor is dryed up then put them on a tin plate in an oven after the bread.

Typical of contemporary recipes, what this one doesn’t tell you is that presumably the mushrooms will then be desiccated enough to be easily rubbed into powder, probably with the fingers.

Secondly, how about some fancy presentation (probably with some height here too):

To make a dish of birds nests

Make a good forced meat stiff, which must be formed in the shape of little birds nests, do them over with yolks of eggs lay the warm vermicelli upon them like straws, bake them in a slow oven, take care they are not discoloured, beat some yolks of eggs and boil them loosely, you may then form them, by lying them in small pieces of muslin, the size of birds eggs, and scalding them again put a ragout of sweet breads or any thing you like in the dish.

Turning to desserts, here’s an exotically flavoured cheesecake (not sure how it would taste though):

Potatoe cheese-cakes

To a ¼ lb potatoes boiled skined & beaten in a mortar add a ¼ lb of sugar & a ¼ of butter 2 eggs leaving out the whites of one the juice of a lemon & the peel of ½ a one grated sweet meats & currants if you like it, then add a glass of mountain or any sweet wine bake them with a puff paste round the tins.

Want to pair that with some jelly strips in different colours? Here’s how – first the jelly itself, then the colourings:

Orange Jelly

Over night boil 2 oz Isinglass in a pint of spring water till it comes to a ½ pint, also over night put ½ a lb single refined sugar into 3 pints water let it boil fast till half is consumed take the juice of 3 china & 1 seville orange & 1 large lemon pare them thin & put the peels into the juice let it stand covered close till next morning – then strain it off & put the isinglass into some hot water then melt the jelly, mix & stir all well together & put it into your moulds, let them stand till cold, then turn them out & lay thin shreds of the peels over it. N.B. After the isinglass is boil’d strain it thro’ a bit of muslin the jelly shod be stiff enough to cut with a knife & eat with a fork.

And finally, that old favourite spun sugar for the ultimate decoration (watchers of today’s cookery programmes will be far more familiar with the type of method here than this rather convoluted description can convey):

To spin a gold web for covering a custard

Beat 4 ounces of treble refined sugar in a marble mortar, & sift it through a hair seive, then put it in a silver or brass ladle (silver makes the colour better) set it over a chafing dish of charcoal that is burnt clear, and set it on a table, and turn a tin cover or china bowl upside down on the same table, and when your sugar is melted it will be of a gold colour then take your ladle off the fire and begin to spin it, take a knife & begin to spin by taking up as much of the syrrup as the point of it will hold, and a fine thread will come from the point which you must draw as quick as possible backwards & forwards, and also round the mould as long as it will spin from the knife be very carefull not to drop the syrup on the web, if you do it will spoil it, then dip your knife into the syrup again and take up more, and so keep spinning ‘till your sugar is done, or your web is thick enough, be sure you do not let the knife touch the lump on the plate that is not melted, it will make it brittle & not spin at all. If your sugar is spent before your web is gone put fresh sugar on a clean plate & do not spin from the same plate again, if you do not want the web to cover the custard immediately set the web on a deep pewter plate or dish & cover it with a tin cover & lay a cloth over it, to prevent the air from getting to it, & set it before the fire; it requires to be left warm or it will fall abroad.